2012/09/22

"Saving Humanity" or "Where's my Handout"

No one actually 100% understand how the climate works -  I think this is a fair statement.

So ask yourself is it SAFE to experiment with the only place we can live when you have
  • No idea what the controls do
  • Whether there are unknown controls
  • What the linkage is between controls
  • If it is a linear system
  • If there are "tipping points"
  • little idea of what positive feedbacks and their magnitudes are
  • little idea of what negative feedbacks and their magnitudes are
  • Only 200 years of prior data that is vaguely reliable.
And of course
  • It takes 30+ years for the effect of each experimental tweak of a control to become clear
  • It takes longer than 30+ years for the effect of the tweak to dissipate (much longer if you trigger an ice age).  
  • It is not just YOUR hand tweaking the controls - there are other humans and natural inputs simultaneously affecting your experiment.
  • Each experiment is disastrously expensive.

Even Watts believes that CO2 is causing warming and some of that is from anthropogenic sources. He just believes it is irrelevant.

Here's a plot with all data zeroed:

Note how small the swings in TSI are.
A couple of Kelvin increase in 288K may seem small but the wealthy nations rely on stability. We no longer have an easy option of migrating to colder/warmer areas, moving our dwellings from the shores of continents as they get inundated (see doggerland! on wiki).


The inhabitants of doggerland simply packed their dwellings took their pots and moved uphill. This would be a trifle more difficult now.

It is not even possible to say leave it until we are sure that there is a problem - the built in time constants ensure that by the time we are sure and take action there will be another multi-decade of environmental changes before we see the effect of our corrections.
I think it is very telling that from all the revelations from "climate gate" and other hacks not ONCE have I seen any one pointing out any climate scientists email (which it is obvious the scientists thought were and always will be private) which suggests that they have vast wealth to spend on themselves.
Watts seems very delighted at having access to a private blog on sks where he foams at the mouth over this snippet:
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And this isn’t about science or personal careers and reputations any more. This is a fight for survival. Our civilisations survival. .. We need our own anonymous (or not so anonymous) donors, our own think tanks…. Our Monckton’s … Our assassins.
  
Anyone got Bill Gates’ private number, Warren Buffett, Richard Branson? Our ‘side’ has got to get professional, ASAP. We don’t need to blog. We need to network. Every single blog, organisation, movement is like a platoon in an army. ..This has a lot of similarities to the Vietnam War….And the skeptics are the Viet Cong… Not fighting like ‘Gentlemen’ at all. And the mainstream guys like Gleick don’t know how to deal with this. Queensberry Rules rather than biting and gouging.
  
..So, either Mother Nature deigns to give the world a terrifying wake up call. Or people like us have to build the greatest guerilla force in human history. Now. Because time is up…Someone needs to convene a council of war of the major environmental movements, blogs, institutes etc. In a smoke filled room (OK, an incense filled room) we need a conspiracy to save humanity.
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To me it sound a bit like "saving humanity" not "where's my handout".

  

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